Safe, Sound, and Hopefully Not Sorry
by PortalWolf0
Summary: After months of the infectious Zombie Virus, New York is infected. The day the virus hit town, Ruby fled to her grandmother in Maine, Belle staying behind to care for her sick father. Going after Ruby, Belle wanders for weeks looking for a little unmapped town called Storybrooke. She is a mess; alone, cold, and the worst of all, injured.
**Full Summary:**

After months of the infectious Zombie Virus, New York is infected. The day the virus hit town, Ruby fled to her grandmother in Maine, Belle staying behind to care for her sick father. Her father dies. Going after Ruby, Belle French has been wandering for weeks looking for a little unmapped town called Storybrooke. She is a mess; alone, mucked up, freezing cold, and the worst of all, injured. Just outside of where she's looking for she has a run in with not only a beast of a zombie but the beast of Storybrooke himself, _Mr. Gold._

 **A/N:**

Acair: The Gaelic Scottish word for Anchor.

After revising the chapter a thousand times- there shouldn't be- but, there may be a slip of 'Acair' being listed under 'Adam', this was drafted around the start of 'Bench Trial' and I didn't change it until later on.

Last of all, I'm currently looking for a beta, would anyone be interested?

 **Chapter 1:** _ **Welcome To Storybrooke**_

It was a night like any other for Gold, patrolling the town borders that lay near his house. He was no longer the exact the town had known only a couple years ago; he was still the town beast, but he wasn't as feared as he had been. Few still went to him unless they needed him, but it was more than what had been. For the old landlord still had the connections and money to make a delivery trip worth while to some poor, unfortunate company. Yet now he had often ditched his beloved suits for a thicker leather jacket and jeans, but today was not one of them. He still collected some type of rent on Sundays, and made his wretched deals, and today was one of them. The recent years had not made his injured leg any better- worse if anything-but he supposed it was better than having no leg at all; he knew he was lucky man when it came to that. While the handicap was no fun, his canes often came in handy for fighting the blasted undead.

Never did Acair Gold think that he, indeed, would be involved in something so outrageous as the zombie apocalypse. While happily believing that the dead would never suddenly come back to life and start picking away at the human race like vultures, Gold was in denial when the whole ordeal came upon the news one fateful morning. When finding out that this was no stupid hoax, Acair, along with the mayor Regina Mills, brought in their special connections and built Storybrooke to immense standards. This having been only around two years ago. While the town was not substantially new any longer (it had been around for almost 30 years now), Storybrooke now had its reasons for still not being on the map, and- a very good ones at that, if Acair were to argue. No one would know about the little town unless they had some connections; which few did. While the disease taken a slow slow roots at first, it had sped up within the last few months, taking its claim over a couple of majors cities and states, including its most recent victim being New York. It hadn't taken its directions much towards Maine yet, but there was no chance in Hell he was going to let the dead disturb _his_ peace and quiet.

Tonight, it was a quiet night, as per usual. Well, it was quiet until he heard the sound of movement that had seemed to be only a couple feet away. Quickly, he hid himself behind a tree and watched for movement. It wasn't long before his eyes fell upon a limping figure. He was about to ready his gun but stopped when he had realized this was no zombie. No, this was a very alive- yet injured, young woman. Under the torn cloth and collected filth, he was rather sure she was a pretty one at that. It was all too soon that he saw that she too had some unexpected company. He watched her attempt at a turn on her injured leg and fail, falling front first into the muddy ground. For an injured woman, she was defiantly quick; she quickly rolled over with a pistol in hand (that had seemed to come out of thin air to him) and aimed right at the zombie's head, but when she pulled the trigger there was no blast; only the horrific sound of the clicking of an empty barrel. It was then he decided to step in. The adrenaline kicking in, he ignored the burning in his own injured leg as rushed over to the two, cane being swept into the air and impacting the monster straight on the crown of its head. The bloody, moving corpse fell to the ground, a new open gash in its skull, but unfortunately the first strike had not finished him. He started to crawl impeccably fast over to Acair, but its intentions soon were ended with the impaling of another blow to its head with the golden Fritz handle, and an extra few for good measure, creating the cracking of bone sounding through the air. Blood now covered the end of his cane (and Gold was more than happy he had chosen to wear leather gloves tonight), along with splatters of blood detailing his good pinstripe suit and his already red dress shirt. After checking that there were no more around, he looked over the trembling girl who looked shocked that she hadn't been greeted by death itself yet.

"Well, that was a rather nasty run in." He joked in monotone, looking over at the bloody mess laying in front of them, watching her out of the corner of his eyes as he continued; "You 'ought to be more careful next time. Can you stand up?" He asked, eyes roaming down to the woman's injured ankle and back up. He couldn't tell if she was scared of him or not. She almost looked more surprised than anything. Finally, the woman spoke, soft, but with the enlacement of an Australian accent. "I'm not sure..." she said meekly, her eyes darting away from from him in embarrassment. She attempted to stand, almost getting there fully until she put pressure on her right ankle. With a yelp of pain, she almost fell over but before she could fully hit the ground, a strong arm wrapped around her, pulling her back up and holding her in place against him. They both stood in silence for what seemed like forever, her holding onto him to refrain from leaning on her injury more. "I guess not... I- um, t- thank you..." She seemed breathlessly.

As he snapped back into reality, Gold cleared his throat, "It's no matter. But what are you out here at this time of night, _alone_? _I_ hardly want to be out here."

Suddenly the woman's face scrunched up, brows furrowing. "I can take care of myself, thank you very much, Sir." She snapped back out at him. His eyes widened, both tempted to take a step back for his own safety, and to just drop the woman so she **_could_** take care of herself. When he moved to do so, she clenched onto the shoulder of his jacket, keeping him put along with somehow keeping her herself up. "No, wait!" She gasped out, her oncoming words leaving her mouth in a rush as if her life depended on them. Now, he supposed they had. "I'm sorry. As you can see, it's been a rough day... I'm looking for a town called Storybrooke! Do you know of it?" Her head was tilted in curiosity, eyes glimmering in what seemed to be her last strand of hope she possessed. Normally, Acair Gold wouldn't mind destroying such a thing- it was what he was known for doing, yet for some reason he couldn't take it from this one girl.

Under her hand, his stance became more rigid, his shoulders squaring, and leather clad hand grasping at the end of his cane _just_ a bit tighter "I happen so. Why are you looking, Dearie?" His brows furrowed and his voice was weary. Instantly, came her answer for him. "I'm looking for one of my friends, she came into town last month." _Let him guess; tall brunette, with red highlights, and granddaughter to the Widow Lucas?_ Acair knew exactly who she was talking about. It was only once in a blue moon where people would come across little ole Storybrooke and this girl was one of the rare eclipses.

In reply, he simply nodded in confirmation and he could tell as sudden relief washed over her face, lips turning in a slight smile. "Now, Dearie, we'll catch our death if we stay out here, one way or another. Let's go." With that, he wrapped an arm around her and helped her hobble towards town.


End file.
